Tina Brown's sweeping account of the healing power of Chelsea Clinton's extravagant and beautiful wedding is, to put it mildly, odd. Beyond assertions about Chelsea's ability to blend into the Mezvinsky's "multiracial family" and speculation about what is "clearly is an additional bond" over scandals, Brown tells us that we love the Chelsea wedding because we need it. It plays into 90s nostalgia; it tells us that kids can have fairy-tale endings even when they go through a lot; it brought us some escapism.

Advertisement

But here's the problem: all this presupposes that we, in our heart of hearts, truly did care. That we were all whipped into the furor of slavering interest that the headlines, the tabloid covers, the obsessive coverage would suggest. That we were demanding this intrusive coverage, the exhaustive details, the itemized list of prices.

Don't get me wrong, we were all happy for Chelsea. She's always seemed like a nice woman. Who doesn't like a wedding? If she's happy, we're happy. I'm sure if you were a Rhinebeck resident, it was an exciting diversion. For those of us planning, it's always mildly interesting to see how people handle things like interfaith weddings. But speaking for myself, this was the extent of it: basically, beyond this, the feeling quickly turned into "just leave her alone - no one is asking for this degree of scrutiny." It all seemed so...out of the blue. Our new royalty? Comparisons to Princess Diana? The alleged feverish interest seemed straight out of Wag the Dog. None of this had anything to do with "America" - and as Brown herself says, the wedding was neither a celebrity nor a political circus.

Brown, of course, has a more personal stake.

When I saw Bill Clinton at a dinner a month or two ago, he was already getting emotional. "They found each other," he said of Marc and Chelsea, as if they were orphans in a storm, "and these two, they really love each other. That's all I'm living for right now-walking Chelsea down the aisle."...He-they-pulled it off. On the front pages yesterday, neither Hillary nor Chelsea had ever looked so beautiful and happy, the geeky groom so hunky, or the roué presidential dad so proudly statesmanlike. These were more than family snaps. They allowed a bruised nation to forget, for a moment, the jarring 10 years in between.

Bruised nations, apparently, are soothed by back-handed compliments. Which is good, because it's all about us. Even when we don't have the good sense to know it.